Royal Mail Formally Respond to Local Delivery Issues and an Insiders View

Following almost a month of disruption of the mail service within Raunds and surrounding areas, causing significant delays in mail being delivered and mail appearing to be ‘stock piled’, we asked Royal Mails Director of External Relations for an official statement and an explanation.

The Royal Mail spokeswoman said: “ Royal Mail is extremely busy with the Christmas mail bag, which started before Black Friday. We have also been unfortunately hit locally by severe weather. All our people have been out delivering where it has been safe to do so and deliveries are now back to normal.”

“Our postmen and women in our mail centres and on delivery are working around the clock to deliver Christmas for all of our customers in all weathers. People concerned about deliveries can contact our customer service for further information on 03457 740740 or go to www.RoyalMail.com/serviceupdates.”

After following up the statement to try to find out the root cause; why the capacity for Black Friday wasn’t there and whether this was related to budget cuts or due to taking on extra Amazon Prime deliveries; this is the response received:

“It has been caused by high volumes and bad weather.

It has nothing to do with Amazon

There are no cuts to staff and we take on extra people at our busiest time of year. All our people are working around the clock to deliver Christmas in the UK.

We are sorry if deliveries have not been as expected but they are back on track now”

A source who wishes to remain anonymous gave us some insights on what they believe the real issues to be:

“The reason for the issues with mail is the recent ‘revision’ of rounds, Raunds specifically has lost one round which has been divided up between remaining rounds, it has made the rounds so big they can’t be achieved in the normal working hours we are paid for, initially people went over there time daily to keep on top of things, but obviously this is not something people can physically do long term.

This Christmas pressure starts around start of November and continues to build, on top of that the bad weather, making it dangerous to be walking round with heavy bags, and not able to use the trolley in the snow/ice means everything has fallen further and further behind.

The management are aware but can’t or haven’t done anything about it, I don’t honestly know why or if they can do something.

Everyone at wboro [Wellingborough] delivery office [is] on their knees, this is the worst Christmas I have ever known usually we all just keep going to get it done.

But the revision has made it virtually impossible to clear daily.

Usually the back log would get snapped up on overtime but nobody seems to want to do it this year, yes some staff have given up their only day off (Sunday) but as they are only paying time and a third that’s not had a great turn out either.”

“It’s madness, because even after Xmas pressure the rounds are too big, the revision came in two phases starting sept, and that’s when mail delivery started to get erratic”

“Who knows what they will do next. We take the brunt but we really are trying”

We put these comments back to Royal Mail who told us:

“Overtime is offered to all our staff and we continually review our resources at our busiest time. locally we have been hit by exceptional volumes of mail over several weeks as well as bad weather. Deliveries are now normal, despite the continued high volumes of mail. If customers have been affected by this then we apologise and we ensure them that we are committed to providing a great service.”

“Anyone who has a complaint internally should speak direct to their manager or union rep.”

Well apparently the service is back to resuming normally but is the issue really fixed? – our sources tell us that they are not but that a new strategy is being deployed by a different delivery office manager to focus on getting parcels out. Will it be enough to save the Christmas delivery?

If the service is back to normal then it must simply be a coincidence that another of our parcels sent from Amazon using Royal Mail wasn’t delivered but tracking showed it was out for delivery.

Please comment with your lost tracking numbers or get in touch with Royal Mail if you notice any further major disruptions.

Are you a Royal Mail employee? – let us know what is really going on anonymously via email to raunds@townvoice.co.uk

I got a letter and small package today. The package was ordered later than the two items that should have been delivered Monday. When they weren’t delivered, I was told it would be Tues or Wed. Today, I’m told they do not have a delivery date. This is called 24 hr guaranteed. Yet, they also state that this is an aim, not a guarantee. Total incompetence.

Black Friday has been going on a few years now and we had one day of snow??????? Years ago snow was a more frequent experience so why are we having delivery problems this year?!?!?! It must be due to some mad cost cutting exercise……!

What total (insert rude word of choice). This has been going on since before Black Friday, nothing to do with Christmas either and I don’t really see how Black Friday can affect letter post. Perhaps they can explain. Did get some Christmas cards yesterday and today tho’, at last.

I see that RM does not mention the revision where the staff had to learn new deliveries at the busiest time of year. They can’t ever admit any responsibility. The monthly staff mag arrived today, and the chairman, Moyà Greene, writes, ‘You have done a brilliant job in delivering a brilliant service for our customers.’

This is not just from Nov. I waited for a parcel for 10 days in Oct. A new one was sent out by the company I purchased from and both arrived same day same time 3 days later.. so where had my first parcel been all this time. ( They both had dates on so I knew exactly when posted)

Tonights email sent to Royal Mail: “Today you made a statement that all deliveries are now back to normal in the area. We have a series of Amazon orders scheduled for delivery and a lot are going out via Royal Mail.

This morning at 5:58am the tracking on 1 item was showing Out for Delivery but it was never delivered. If the service has resumed why did this happen, and why am I still receiving complaints from other residents in the area that they are seeing the same?

From what I have been told from an inside source in Royal Mail, the issues are far from resolved and a different manager at Wellingborough is trying some new tactics to try to get things back on track.

Anonymous Royal Mail Source: “hmm not admitting the issue again, ask any postie on their round what the issue is and they will tell you what I have said, makes me angry, all for progress ? It’s madness, because even after Xmas pressure the rounds are too big, the revision came in two phases starting sept, and that’s when mail delivery started to get erratic”

Is Royal Mail covering up some kind of issue by making claims that service is operating normally when it isn’t or are the issues simply not making there way to the top and being covered up locally? – It seems that a round was cut in Raunds and then spread across the other rounds making it impossible for your staff to cope with.

When exactly can the town of Raunds, Northamptonshire expect service to resume normally?”

I’m not being funny, I work on Sundays for the same money I get every other day of the week, Sunday is no longer any different from any other day of the week why should people expect more money to work it… Change their contracts to 5/7 days that way they can deliver daily and not have people picking and choosing when to work… I bet they all go shopping at the weekend and expect the shops to be opened and staff available to serve them… Buck up Royal Mail and pull yourself into the current century

It isn’t a case of people picking when they want to work. My son is a postie in Cambridgeshire. They work a six day week for, I believe, four weeks then have a week off. He invariably works at least part of his week off because it is overtime, plus they are short staffed. They have had the same problem in Ely with rounds being reorganised making it impossible to get everything delivered the same day.

Having read the article it stated that they didn’t have enough people to do overtime on Sunday because they were choosing not to work because they were only being paid time and a third now… That is people picking when they want to work because they are being paid less on Sunday than they obviously are used to getting… Shop workers get paid flat rate all week with no enhanced Sundays so why should post workers get it, I also believe the emergency service are on flat rate Sunday and have to work them. My point is Sunday, unless you legally choose to opt out, is an additional day that could be opened up as a non optional working day, enabling 7 day a week working which would ease the pressure. If the issues being caused are down purely to cutbacks in staff levels, that is a completely different issue. There is obviously a reason for the reorganisation of rounds that has not been disclosed, I would suspect in the eyes of the management making an improvement that is either still in progress or has not worked. The impact of the continued minimum wage increases may in part be to blame, they are at the end of the day still a business and have budgets that for many years have struggled, with hence the closure of many post-offices.

There’s something going on obviously – re-doing routes, adjusting staff levels, whatever. Like many privatisations (e.g. railways) I’m not at all sure that the perceived benefits have been realised. FYI, Royal Mail and Post Office are separate businesses now.

I’ve been saying for ages that the post isn’t right in Raunds. We only get deliveries once or twice a week and a lot of first class post is taking three of four days to come after the date it should be delivered